Page 792 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 2010
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I would congratulate everybody—the board, Coralie herself, of course, and all the people that are involved in the theatre. I will not list the awards because other people have done that before me. I think that Mr Coe should get an award for the person who could read all the awards in the fastest amount of time in five minutes.
Ms Hunter: Without breathing.
MS PORTER: Without breathing, and being coached at the same time by Mr Doszpot. I was very impressed by that. I am going to suggest to the CAT board that we have a special award for the people that can do that every year. I know the night is a long night. I can assure you that if you have not been to a CAT award you need to take your earplugs because everybody screams very loudly when their particular theatre group or person is mentioned as being nominated. Of course, they scream even more loudly when that person actually gets on the stage to receive the award. You need the earplugs and you also need a lot of “stayability” because it is a long night. But it is a fantastic night and I would not miss it for quids, as they say.
So congratulations to everybody and we look forward to a really good year of theatre. As members, we are very fortunate to be able to see our productions in this town and occasionally we go out of town to see productions in other places as well. So we all look forward to next year.
Community council
Planning—Molonglo
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.44): Last Wednesday evening, 17 February, I attended a public meeting for south Canberrans to consider whether they wanted to form a community council. I know you joined me at that meeting, Ms Le Couteur. It is an interesting anomaly that south Canberra does not have a community council. Belconnen has one. Gungahlin has one. Western Creek, Woden, Tuggeranong and north Canberra all have community councils, but south Canberra does not have one, despite the presence of a number of residents organisations in that area. It was a really interesting meeting to go to, to listen to the issues that were of concern to members of the community, ranging from perhaps the things you might expect around development issues, traffic—the more controversial issues perhaps—through to issues of provision of community services and simply working together on community vegie plots or sea change type activities.
The conclusion of the meeting was that the group does seek to move forward. A working group has been established to look at forming a constitution to put this organisation together. I think this will be an important and useful initiative to help the residents of south Canberra to voice some of their particular concerns more effectively.
I think that desire to get together and make a difference was in stark contrast to the total lack of imagination we saw when it came to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition in this chamber this morning regarding the development of Molonglo. We heard from Mr Seselja a tired old business-as-usual bland description of what he
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